This article draws on recent progress in economics—especially in the economics of information, property rights, transaction costs, induced innovations, household production, and the theory of the state—to analyze the functions and choices of social institutions, and to consider the mechanism of institutional change. My purpose is to show that institutions provide useful services and that instit...

Climate change and its possible impacts on the environment and socio-economic systems now constitute the most important environmental problem facing mankind in the 21st century. Climate change will increase poverty and hardship, endanger food security, destabilize economies, decrease food and water and create social insecurity in many countries and undermine our goals for achieving sustainable ...